On Tour: Just Another Day In Paradise

Today marks our fifth day at South Padre Island KOA Holiday RV park. We'll be leaving Thursday morning and heading for Matagorda Bay Nature Park where we will spend Thursday and Friday nights before continuing to our next stop at Acadian Oasis RV Park in Youngsville, LA. Matagorda Bay looks like a beautiful place to hang out for a couple days.

Aerial View of Matagorda Nature Park RV Park

There's nothing particularly alluring about Youngsville, LA aside from the fact that it provides us a place to park for three days so that Suzanne can conduct business. I haven't yet called them to make a reservation and to ask about Verizon coverage and wifi - but I have viewed the Verizon coverage map and it all looks good.

Thursday morning's route to Matagorda N.P.

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The weather here on South Padre Island has been great. It's quite a bit more humid than what we'd become accustomed to in Southern California over the winter - but temps have been in the 80s and despite the forecast of possible thunderstorms almost every day, the sky has remained mainly clear and sunny with an occasional bank of clouds moving in for an hour or two.

We've sampled and enjoyed some of the local cuisine. I mentioned Yummies Bistro in my last blog. Since then we've had an early dinner at Pier 19...

... and lunch at The Painted Marlin Grille...

Wonderful dining experiences, both. The Painted Marlin served an appetizer neither of us have seen before - avocado fries. I guess you can make a fry out of just about anything these days.

I really liked them! Suzanne thought they were just okay.

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We've been to the beach a number of times - not to swim, but just for long walks. Travis doesn't quite know what to make of it. He's been to the ocean before - when we were in Plymouth, MA last summer. But Plymouth Bay doesn't have much in the way of waves. The gulf side of SPI does. It's fun to watch him run up to the water then hop back to avoid the incoming waves.

Sunday afternoon we drove all the way to the northern terminus of Padre Blvd., the main north/south drag on the island, climbed over the dunes and out to the beach.

There were lots of "Blue Button Jellyfish" (which apparently isn't really a jellyfish at all) washed up on the beach. I had never seen or even heard of a blue button jellyfish before. They're not poisonous but can cause itching if you come in contact with one. We managed to avoid coming in contact with one.

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KOA staff has begun digging up site 192 to repair the broken water pipe. I'm SO glad we decided to move to another site! The ground is pretty well saturated over there now and extricating the coach at this point would have been problematic.

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I've been busying myself doing odd jobs around the coach. I try to keep things well organized in the cargo bays but the slide out tray that holds my tools and cleaning supplies tends to get a little out of control from time to time - so yesterday I took the opportunity to reorganize.

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I wasn't blogging at the time and I don't know if I've made mention of this in previous blogs but, when we first bought the TOUR and headed for Glacier National Park we discovered early in the trip that two of the three roof AC units weren't working. How and where we ended up having them replaced is a long and interesting story (maybe I'll write about it sometime). One thing I liked about this coach, as compared to our old one, was that the condensation produced by each of the three AC units is transported to the rear bumper area by way of plastic tubing where it is deposited on the ground. Many RVs have no such plumbing and the condensate simply rolls off the roof - usually off the side of the roof, depending on the "levelness" of the rig. Well, what I didn't know when I ordered the replacement units was that in order for them to connect to the drainage system, I needed to specify that I wanted them equipped with a 'condensate pump'.

That was two (plus) years ago and since then I've been content to let the water run off the side of the roof. It's not that big a deal... but kinda messes up a nice wax job... especially when the roof is dirty - and if you happen to be standing or sitting in the wrong place you can sometimes get a little wet.

So yesterday I went up on the roof and removed the cover from one of the units...

...got the model number and called Airxcel, the manufacturer of Coleman RV AC units, and spoke to a tech. I had my fingers crossed, hoping there was something that could be retro-fitted to these units and that I hadn't purchased the wrong ones altogether. The Coleman tech advised me that there was indeed a "condensate pump assembly" made to mount in my Mach 8 units and that they were $56 each. I ordered two and had them shipped to my home address. I'll install them this summer.